


Stories and Lies

by reconditarmonia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:59:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18294566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: Andrew remembers Anya's death.





	Stories and Lies

"She died saving my life."

Andrew can't picture what goes through Xander's mind as he accepts the story. His own mind is still filled with the cultists and the vampires, and with the sight of Anya lying on the floor.

In the coming days, he imagines a couple of different ways it could have gone, in case Xander asks.

There's the obvious version where Anya leaps in front of a cultist's blade meant for him. With a roar of grief and pain, he avenges her, but it's too late.

Anya yells across the hall to warn him that an ubervamp's in his blind spot, but that moment of distraction costs her her life.

"Hey! Pick on someone your own size!" she yells at two cultists restraining him for a third's knife, and they drop him and go for her — he doesn't think Xander would believe this one.

The one where Anya sees him surrounded and fights her way over to save him, only to fall to an ubervamp who catches her sword.

Andrew spends a lot of time thinking about that last one, about how Anya would have looked cutting a swath through the bad guys — how her hair would have moved, her little grunts of exertion, the dull light on her sword. Xander never asks him about it, but more and more often, he catches himself remembering it as though it happened.


End file.
